The future of open access and library publishing

This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Emerald Group Publishing Limited and can be found at: http://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=nlw.PURPOSE – The purpose of this article is to provide a vision for how academic libraries can assume a more central role in a future where Open Access publishing has become the predominant model for disseminating scholarly research articles.\ud \ud DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH – The authors analyze existing trends related to Open Access policies and publishing, with an emphasis on the development of repositories managed by libraries to publish and disseminate articles. We speculate that these trends, coupled with emerging economic realities, will create an environment where libraries' will assume a major role in the Open Access publishing environment. We provide some suggestions for how this major role might be funded.\ud \ud FINDINGS – The trends and economic realities discussed will lead to new roles for academic librarians and will change the existing roles.\ud \ud ORIGINALITY/VALUE – This article provides insights for academic libraries and their institutions to consider a dramatic shift in the deployment of subscription dollars from a dysfunctional and largely closed scholarly communication system to one that provides open, unfettered access to research results